1. Technical Field
Embodiments described herein relate to computer processing and more specifically to register file access.
2. Description of the Related Art
Part of the operation of many computer systems, including portable digital devices such as mobile phones, notebook computers and the like, is the use of some type of display device, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), to display images, video information/streams, and data. Accordingly, these systems typically incorporate functionality for generating images and data, including video information, which are subsequently output to the display device. Such devices typically include graphics processing units to process video and image information for subsequent display.
Graphics processing units (GPUs) typically operate on large amounts of graphics data in parallel using multiple execution pipelines or shaders. Modern GPUs are becoming more and more programmable, with less computation done in fixed-function hardware and more computation done using programmable shaders that execute graphics instructions from application developers. Execution of such instructions may consume considerable power, especially in more powerful GPUs.